Meet the Broker: Chris Mayka

Today we meet Chris Mayka, director of list brokerage at Atlantic List Co. He switches back and forth every two weeks from working at home in Vermont to working at corporate headquarters in Arlington, VA.

"I like to travel. I enjoy country living and also the schizophrenia of city living," Mayka said. "So you might say I'm happy leading a double life."

Before joining Atlantic nearly two years ago, Mayka spent about 20 years working for Direct Communications Corp. in Vermont. He found himself in the list business after he tried unsuccessfully to sell a photocopy machine to Direct Communications. Instead, they offered him a job.

"I started out doing consulting work and bringing in new clients, but the way we were paid was by getting commissions for list brokerage and management," said Mayka.

Most of his brokerage experience has been with publishers and nonprofit organizations. His clients include Ode Magazine, Funny Times, E Magazine, Calvary Hospital, Actors' Fund of America, American Poetry Review and Scripps Health.

Mayka said technological innovations would continue to change list brokerage. He believes the practice of renting individual lists for mailings will one day be superseded by renting lists almost exclusively for building statistical models for targeting offers.

The future of direct marketing, he feels, will be defined by increased modeling capability, and improvements in models built with data from cooperative databases such as Abacus and Target.

"Technology will catch up with the hype we've been hearing about for years. The future lies in e-mail and list modeling," he said.

When he's not working, Mayka's fun time pursuits include bicycling, sailing and reading about American history—"the nonfiction kind," he quipped. He is happily anticipating soon becoming a grandfather.

What do you like about list brokerage?

"I like brokerage because in my own way I'm helping change some of mainstream society. Through working with nonprofits and political groups I can make a difference in people's lives.

"A lot of my clients cannot market themselves on TV or many other ways and their only avenue is direct mail," he continued. "Whether I'm working with fundraisers or political groups or publishers it's creating a community through direct mail that reflect my clients' values and my values. It really is a great reason for me to go to work," said Mayka.

Do you think e-mail list brokerage will ever surpass postal list brokerage?

Direct mail won't ever die, but it's likely take on a smaller role as e-mail evolves, he said. "It will be interesting to see how it plays out."

What's holding up a boom in e-mail marketing is the lack of industry standards for data generated from the Internet, according to Mayka.

The many new sources of data need to be defined, he explained. Data cards routinely cite "opt-in" or Internet as a data source, but it would be more valuable for brokers if they were more specific about how the data is being generated—co-registration, Web page sign-up, e-mail, search or whatever. "List managers need to be more accountable."

"I think e-mail is going to take off when we have some rules, so brokers will know exactly what they're getting," he said.

Know someone you'd like to suggest for Meet the Broker? E-mail Jim.Emerson@Penton.com